1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a storage such as a stocker for temporarily storing a load (i.e., a transported object or an object), such as a FOUP (Front Opening Unified Pod) for accommodating or housing various substrates for manufacturing semiconductor elements and the like, at the position located close to a track, in a traveling system for transporting the load on the track. Here, the “load” (i.e., the “transported object” or “object”) in the present invention means a products an intermediate product, a part, an article, a work, a partly-finished good, a good or the like (e.g, a semiconductor or LCD device), or means a box or container for containing such a product or the like (e.g, a container containing the semiconductor or LCD device), which has been transported or is to be transported by the transporting carriage. The load may be a carrier for containing an object to be carried such as a FOUP.
2. Description of the Related Art
This kind of storage is installed close to a track on which a transporting carriage such as a vehicle travels for example. In the storage, a lot of rack portions are installed so as to store a lot of loads which are transported or to be transported by the transporting carriage. Further, a transporting apparatus in a storage, which is called as a “stacker robot”, a “stacker crane” or the like, is provided to perform the transportation of the load between a “port” and the assigned or designated rack portion (i.e., to perform transportation within the storage). The “port” is to perform the delivery-and-receipt or the taking-out and putting-in of the load (i.e., loading and unloading of the load) between the inside of such a storage and the transporting carriage. Especially, the transportation within the storage including a lot of rack portions arranged crisscross is made possible by the stacker robot or the like (refer to Japanese Patent Application Publication Laying Open No. 2006-049454 and 2003-182815).
On the other hand, as this kind of storage, there is a storage, which is relatively compact, and in which a load is directly transferred (i.e., loaded and unloaded) from a transporting carriage of ceiling hanging type onto a rack stage capable of going up and down along the side of rack portions, which are vertically arranged by a plurality of levels, In this storage, when a load is unloaded (i.e., taken-out from the storage), the load is directly transferred from the rack stage capable of going up and down, to the transporting carriage (refer to Japanese Patent Application Publication Laying Open No. 2004-238191).